Word: gorbachev
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Pugo simultaneously played to Gorbachev's own Russianness by warning that the many ethnic Russians who lived in the Baltics were subject to harassment and perhaps even persecution at the hands of local nationalists. Choosing his words carefully, Pugo asked for, and received, authority to take "the measures necessary to assure that constitutional norms are upheld and the rights of minorities are respected...
...first Gorbachev and the reactionaries tried to co-opt each other. One of Gorbachev's aides, fluent in the earthy idiom of American politics, paraphrases a favorite line of Lyndon Johnson's: "Mikhail Sergeyevich felt it was better to have the camels inside the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in. He wanted to keep them where he could see them and where they would have to take his orders. He also wanted to use them to put pressure on the Balts." That arrangement was fine with the reactionaries, since they had considerable latitude in how to interpret...
...Gorbachev met frequently with Boris Pugo, who had become Interior Minister on Dec. 2, 1990. In these conversations Pugo was careful to steer clear of the fundamental issue of whether the Baltic republics were entitled to independence. Instead he stayed within the bounds of his responsibility for law and order. With the Baltics acting as though they were already sovereign states, he said, the situation was "spinning out of control"; if the Baltics succeeded in defying Moscow, other republics would be encouraged to do the same...
Pugo was a Latvian who had been the KGB chief in Riga in the early '80s. He knew that Gorbachev believed all nationalities in the U.S.S.R. should be united by Soviet patriotism. In his conversations with Gorbachev he evoked this sentiment repeatedly, in effect offering himself as an example of a good Balt as opposed to ungrateful, unreasonable troublemakers like Vytautas Landsbergis, the brave but reckless president of Lithuania...
...Gorbachev was appalled at the bloodshed in the Baltics and devastated by the criticism that rained down on him at home and abroad. When he met with a group of international peace activists, instead of radiating his usual sense of command, he all but threw himself on the mercy of his visitors. He promised he was still committed to making the U.S.S.R. a "law-based society." He portrayed himself as a victim of tumultuous events and historical currents, compared himself to a voyager who was "out of sight of land." He was, he remarked, feeling seasick...